Adventure Magazine Cover — page 67: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Sir Galahad and the Badger The sentence came out crisply, like a drill- sergeant talking to a club-footed recruit; and the twin automatics settled down so menacingly that Butch hurriedly began scratching at his collar. It was a silk shirt of wide blue and yellow stripes, and Butch tore it; which made him swear, for it was a new shirt. But he got it off, and stood forth in heavy woolen underwear from the waist up. Jack spoke again. “Get out of that underwear.” “W’a-a-at!”’ came in long-drawn aston- ishment from the outraged Butch. Butch was a gang leader, a hard-boiled nut, full of crimes and even a bit red of hand; he didn’t know what morals were—but he was not immodest. And the unreasoning demand shocked him. “Yl! be foist!”’ 9) “As you say,” answered the cold and heartless young idiot to as dangerous a gangster as there was in the city; and he lifted an automatic as if merely taking a little care to put the bullet directly between Butch’s eyes. Butch changed his mind about his willing- ness to be ; and as he clawed at the buttons of his undershirt he looked in anger and exasperation toward the woman in the chair. But she was not watching. She was careful to avoid Butch’s eyes. For one thing she was afraid of the threat that would be there. willing to see Butch get his if he thought so much of the other lizzie. “Clear out of it,” said Jack. Butch was glowering and uncertain. He did not know what was coming, but enough had already arrived to make him uneasy. His fingers twitched with longing to get hold of that fool’s slender neck. He tried to beg off and explain, but the “shut up” was emphatic. The mouths of the two mon- strous automatics gaped at him steadily. “Now,” said Jack with an air of finality, “down on your belly—flat on the floor.” Butch’s jaw dropped as if broken. He stared dully. Insult was being added to indecency. “Do you want me to drop you?” the boy threatened, ramming one of the guns EE the bare ribs of Butch. uh!” the gangster whined, shrink- ing fom the chill muzzle. “On vour belly,” Jack commanded as gutturally as he could. For another she was. o7 ‘Sav now, bo, looka here——” “‘Take a half-hitch on your tongue.” “W’at’s that?” “Shut up.” “T’ll croak youse f’r dis,”” Butch muttered sullenly, drawing his head down into his shoulders like a snake that settles on itself to strike. “Come on, get down. Clear down. That’s it. More yet. Flat. Flat, I tell you. Put your hands out—out in front of you. Clear out. If you make a move I'll brain you.” Butch Malloy, a dude of gangdom, half- undressed and wholly humiliated, lay prone at the feet of his badger-game wife, while the young idiot she had roped in bowed politely to her. Jack did not doubt her truthfulness, and he had belief in rigorous justice. To. his way of thinking the wife-beater was about two feet lower than a cockroach. The girl sat staring in real breathlessness and part alarm. She was mystified as to what was coming, and uneasy. She was dumfounded when Jack said that now she was to repay her brute of a hus- band blow for blow and teach him the les- son of how it felt to be struck. “Take off his belt and light into him. Make ’em warm, too.” It was her turn to gasp an astonished— ““Wha-ate?”? Butch let go of an enraged growl. “Shut up,” said Jack, sighting along the barrel at him. Adding: “Take off his belt and start in. him good.” Wallop Ses “Butch’s Mag” to distinguish her 'from numerous other molls whose mothers had also liked Margaret for a monaker, felt herself in a pickle. She did not at all understand why she should be thought eager to wallop her man. It was right and proper for a woman in the heat of a quarrel to bounce something off the head of her husband. That was part of married life and relieved the monotony that might otherwise have ended in divorce. She was terrified at the idea of striking Butch. ' Sooner or later he would kill her for it, surely. At that moment she had no great love for Butch. She was even willing to stand by and see him get his, though she doi NEVIN, known as rf cComicbhook C©